Barbara D'Amato - [Cat Marsala 09]

by Hard Road (html)

  Oh hell. In my enthusiasm I'd leaped too far too fast. He was right.

  Hightower actually brightened up. "Yeah, I was just thinking that," he lied.

  18

  DON'T CRY; YOU'LL RUST YOURSELF AGAIN

  When I got home, I phoned Barry, trying the Oz castle office first, hoping he'd arrived back there after I'd left. I didn't try his home first for fear of waking up the baby. Fortunately, he was at the castle.

  "Barry?"

  "Oh, it's you."

  "Barry, don't sound so cold. I have good news."

  "What is it?"

  I described to him in detail what I had discovered. It took a little while to explain; Barry is more the organizer type than the visual artist. Finally, he said, "Oh. Okay."

  "Okay? Is that all you can say? This is great news. It means there's no more reason to suspect you any more than the other three guys. They can't possibly arrest you now." I was forgetting about the fingerprints on the knife, but even if I'd remembered, I would have assumed they'd gotten on the knife when Barry grabbed at Plumly, trying to keep him from falling.

  "Yeah, fine," Barry said.

  Patiently, I said, "Barry, I'm not saying I'm a hero here. But the fact is they would not have thought of this without me."

  "Sure."

  "Please, Barry. Let go of your anger."

  "Cat, you gave the police information that could have put me in jail."

  "We've been over this. So did Jennifer. It was the truth."

  "You admit now it wasn't true."

  "It was true. It was a misperception, but it was an accurate description of what we saw."

  "Whatever," he said, and he hung up.

  * * *

  When you're busy and involved in what you're doing, you forget that you have a persistent pain. But as soon as I let down my guard, the agony in my shoulder came rushing back. If anything, it was worse. I gobbled two aspirin with a glass of water.

  Discouraged though I was, this was no time to get sloppy about procedures. By midnight I was sitting droopily at my kitchen table, where my computer lives, copying all the notes I had made during the day, including the ones in red. If you don't copy them immediately, they start to look like "wmf fggl wt thorgal." My hopes had been so high. Still, the bottom line was that it was no longer only Barry who could have killed Plumly. If he ever went to trial, I would testify that what I thought I had seen was dependent on the lighting.

  After making sure the notes were in order, I took two more aspirin, the first two having made no dent on the shoulder pain, and went to check the messages on my answering machine. The first was from Hal Briskman:

  "Cat, I've got a little more on Pottle for you if you want. Let me know."

  The second was a click-off. Probably a telemarketer. I haven't programmed my phone not to accept calls that don't identify their number, because some anonymous calls could be from people involved in stories I'm doing.

  The third was Jeremy. He had just recently learned to dial several phone numbers, like his dad's office, and his grandparents', and 911 of course, and mine. He had called, according to the time stamp, four hours earlier.

  "Aunt Cat? I guess you're not there [pause]. Well, um, the reason I called [pause] um, Gramma says, um, Gramma said that you said something really bad about Dad [pause]. That's not true, is it?"

  In the background Maud's voice said, "Who are you calling, Jeremy?"

  "Um, nobody."

  "Well, don't call Tokyo. We can't afford it [click]."

  He hung up.

  19

  IF I WERE KING OF THE FOREST

  "We think we see real things, a real world that's 'out there' and solid," E. T. Taubman said. "But we don't. All we see is light."

  "You're right. I know that from high school physics class, but I don't think of it that way."

  "We see just the middle of a long spectrum of radiant energy. Only what we call the visible spectrum, from violet through blue, green, yellow, and orange to red. Beyond red is infrared, and we feel infrared energy as heat. Beyond violet is ultraviolet. Some animals, like bees, see ultraviolet, but we don't. When the colors of the visible spectrum are all present, we see it as white light."

  I had gotten Taubman talking, in hopes that he'd give himself away. If he hadn't killed Plumly himself, he was right there when Plumly was stabbed and he must have seen something. And a man with his sophistication about lighting must have realized the red light made it so we couldn't see the blood. So far, though, he seemed innocently happy to talk about light.

  "When you see an object that looks green," he said, "you're actually looking at a thing that reflects green light. In a way, it's not green at all, it's sending all the green back to you. It's the least green an object can be. If you hit an object that reflects blue with a light that is pure yellow, with no blue whatsoever in it, it will look black."

  "I think I understand."

  "Let me show you." He flicked the light switch and the room was plunged into total darkness. I stepped slightly away from him. It was just a little bit creepy being in pitch darkness with a man who was possibly a double murderer and who might also want me dead. But before I got really worried, a blue light came on.

  "Look at that," he said. "It's the fabric for a drape in a stage play the Bell Theater is producing next fall."

  "It's just a lot of blue triangles."

  "Not really." He clicked off the switch and clicked on another. The triangles vanished and red circles appeared.

  "Wow."

  "You can get really interesting effects that look like motion, just by changing light."

  Taubman reached out one of his lanky arms and turned on a rotating gadget that threw blue and yellow light alternately at a painting on the wall. The painting depicted a stylized fish, and as the blue and yellow light hit it alternately, the fins and tail appeared to move.

  "I like that," I said.

  "If you've seen Yellow Submarine, there's a whole scene with fish that appear to move, but what appears to be flickering motion is just color alternation.

  "The reason theater work is so great is that you can totally control the light. The whole audience is inside a black box and they only see what you allow them to see. If you want the characters to look ill, you cut down on your reds and increase your greens. You can give the audience high noon or evening or an approaching storm just with light alone. I do corporate lobbies and, uh, things like the Oz Festival, but you never get the same amount of control in a situation like that because there are so many competing light sources."

  He had been charging along happily with his description of his work, right up to the moment he thought of the Oz Festival. This was not my imagination. Oz bothered him.

  I really liked that.

  * * *

  Edmond Pottle was much the same as before. His desk was as opulent. His suit was as beautifully tailored. His personality was just as sour.

  "Mr. Pottle, as you know, I'm writing an article on the festival."

  He didn't know. He had probably heard that I was writing something, and he was too egotistical to admit the purpose wasn't clear. However, he said, "I thought you had come here to try to clear your brother."

  "Yes. But I still have my own work to do."

  "I don't have much time. What can I tell you?"

  Just like before. His time is valuable. "How does the city decide on a festival? I mean, there must be lots of suggestions, and there are only a limited number of weeks in the year."

  "Public benefit."

  "Well, sure, but what does that mean?"

  "We have a GospelFest because there's interest in gospel music. A BluesFest because there's interest in blues and because Chicago was one of the ancestral homes of the blues. Blues singers came up from the South, particularly from New Orleans, along the old railroad lines, and stopped here."

  "What about the Taste of Chicago?"

  "That festival showcases Chicago cooking."

  "But only a limited number of r
estaurants can participate. Right?"

  "We try to accommodate as many as possible."

  "But what if too many apply?"

  "We try to accommodate as many as possible."

  I wasn't going to be able to budge him on that. "Well, tell me how a Chicago event gets started."

  "Mmm. Take the cows, for instance. We hope with the Oz Festival to create a totally new thing just as popular as the cows."

  "Lots of luck. The cows were a triumph."

  In the waning months of the twentieth century, Chicago had been glorified with three hundred and six life-sized fiberglass cows. Placed all up and down the city streets, on Michigan Avenue, the south Loop, north Loop, and River North area, they turned out to be a tourism bonanza. New York later borrowed our idea.

  "Indeed they were. They were a triumph of astute business sense and the marriage of civic pride and business acumen."

  Oh dear!

  "A Chicago businessman," he went on, "saw life-sized street-art cows in Zurich when he was on vacation there. They had brought a million extra visitors to Zurich. A million tourists who would not have been there otherwise! Just think what they could do for Chicago! He took the idea to the North Michigan Avenue Business Association people, who were interested, but they wanted to include more than just North Michigan Avenue. They went citywide. The Department of Cultural Affairs came in on it and soon there was money from the Illinois Department of Commerce. Then the Chicago Office of Tourism came in. Busynesses were invited to sponsor the cows and artists were invited to design and paint them."

  The cows stood five feet tall. Sturdy, thick fiberglass in composition, the "blanks" were molded in three bovine forms, standing, lying down, and grazing. Once painted, they were installed on the streets from the Board of Trade to the edge of the Chicago River. There was a toreador cow at the Lyric Opera; there were polka-dotted, striped, flowered, and scenic cows. There were cows with wings, hollow cows, cows carrying gourmet foods, cows with shopping packages on their backs, and cut-up cows. There were all colors, including gold and mother-of-pearl and mosaic and one with a window in its stomach. Some of the artists became so fond of them they wanted to keep them. Some of the Chicago carriage horses were afraid of them and would bolt at the sight of one. In a way that makes a weird sort of sense, the horses were especially afraid of the one that looked like a car. Finally a fiberglass cow was assigned to the carriage company and spent weeks in the pasture with the horses, making friends.

  After the summer was over, the cows were auctioned off. A "cattle auction," cried the newspapers and TV. A roundup! The proceeds were to go to the charity of the sponsor's choice. And they sold for thousands. Tens of thousands. Two or three of them sold for seventy thousand apiece and one cow brought in a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

  You gotta love a city that is often so pretentious and can still laugh at itself to the tune of three hundred and six cows.

  "Still," I said to Pottle, "there must have been some trickle-down."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, who got the license to truck the cows to the spots on the street? Who fastened the cows down on the sidewalks? A city contractor? A private company? Who restored them if they got damaged? Who paid for incidentals?"

  "I can assure you that the entire project was on the up-and-up."

  "Good. By the way, they've dropped my brother as the principal suspect, you know."

  Pottle paled slightly.

  "Oh, really? I'm so— ah, glad for you," he said, in tones that made it clear he wasn't.

  "It's now known that you and Taubman and Mazzanovich, singly or together, could have killed Plumly."

  Pottle coughed. Then he wheezed. He pulled open his desk drawer and got out an asthma inhaler. He shot the medication into his mouth, sucking in the vapor greedily. When he finally had himself under control, he wheezed out, "Now see what you've done! I'm not supposed to get upset. It brings on an attack."

  "Why did you get upset? If you aren't guilty, you don't have a problem, do you?"

  He grabbed for the inhaler again, and I left the office.

  * * *

  When I got to my car, I phoned McCoo. It had been satisfying to goad Pottle, but it hadn't taken me any closer to finding out who the killer was.

  "Hi," I said, with forced cheer. "Anything new?"

  "Cat, you really should talk with the officer in charge instead of me."

  "Not Sergeant Hightower. I don't like him."

  "Lieutenant Hightower."

  "Yeah. And that's another thing. The man is barely competent. He goes by the rules, but he doesn't, as you guys put it, 'bring anything to the table.' How'd he manage to get promoted?"

  Silence. I just waited. Finally, McCoo said, "He's connected, Cat."

  "Like what? I know he's not the mayor's nephew."

  "He's what you might call minorly connected, as opposed to majorly connected. And that's all I'm going to say about it."

  "People have been doing that a lot lately. Telling me half a story and then saying I don't need to know the rest."

  "Can you wonder?"

  "McCoo, is there anything new?"

  "We found the gun."

  "Really? That's great! Where?"

  "In Buckingham Fountain."

  "No kidding? That's a stumper. Why wasn't it seen before this?"

  "It was in the middle basin, not really visible from the ground. You know there are three levels to Buckingham Fountain, in decreasing size as they go up. A maintenance worker found it when he was cleaning out the basins. Stuff gets into the drains, like leaves and dead birds and bugs."

  "Anybody see who threw it there?"

  "We're asking. But a lot of stuff gets thrown into the fountain. Coins. Hot dogs. Car keys. I've always wondered how people get home without their car keys. The lower basin gets more stuff than the upper two. Drunks. Strollers. Jackets. Pants. I wonder how they get home without their pants, too."

  "Is the gun traceable?"

  "Oh, it's got a pedigree. It was stolen in a home invasion three years ago. Our shooter probably just bought it on the so-to-speak open market."

  20

  THE LOLLIPOP GUILD

  So the gun was another dead end.

  When you get really fed up, you should go to Hermione's Heaven, the best restaurant in Chicago, to be fed up by Hermione.

  Her dinners are symphonies. Her lunches are lifesavers. Most of the time, you can't get a table, although more than once she's been kind enough to feed me in the broom closet she uses for an office. It's easier for her, though, if I come in between meals when she can give me a real chair and a normal table. This means early, early dinner, or mid-afternoon dessert. It was mid-afternoon now, and I needed consolation.

  Hermione is a queen-size woman and she takes no guff about it. Her view is that her life is her life. Today she greeted me at the door wearing a neon-purple caftan embroidered with silver dragons and a turban a couple of shades bluer than purple. Wow!

  "What you need," she said, "is chocolate."

  "I'm your slave."

  She seated me in the window, an honor not remotely possible at dinnertime, exited grandly and three minutes later came back with a big cream puff filled with chocolate custard and topped with chocolate-rum syrup and cocoa whipped cream.

  "Ah, decadence," I said. "Feeds the human spirit."

  "As a matter of fact, chocolate is good for you."

  "Oh, come on."

  "A recent study has shown that a large percentage of women and a significant percentage of men are chromium-deficient. Chocolate is one of nature's creations that is rich in chromium. You may be self-selecting chocolate to replenish your chromium supply."

  "Smart of me. But, Hermione, there's a lot of sugar in chocolate desserts."

  "Aha! The British Medical Journal reported a study of nearly eight thousand people that showed the ones who ate candy lived longer than people who didn't. Even if they ate candy several times a week."

  "But what abo
ut the fat?"

  "Much as I'm tired of hearing about cholesterol, it turns out that even though the fat in chocolate is saturated, it doesn't raise your cholesterol level."

  "That's hard to believe."

  "Sorry. What can I tell you? The news isn't always bad. On top of that, there are antioxidants in chocolate. I have been thinking about making up a placard with all these facts, a little card, maybe creamy white letters on a glossy chocolate brown background, one for each table. But then I thought, Maybe it's the forbidden quality of chocolate that makes people love it. What do you think?"